The Women Were Worse Than the Men: Crime and Society in Dublin During 1916
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The Women were Worse than the Men: Crime and Society in Dublin during 1916 The mobs that looted Dublin’s city centre in 1916 have entered the mythology of the Rising just as robustly as the Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army and, as far as I am aware, it was the only occasion in the history of the capital, and possibly Ireland, when more women were convicted of criminal offences than men, hence the title of this talk. However I also want to say something about the wider impact the First World War had on crime in the city The Easter Rising made Dublin unique in the United Kingdom in that it was the only city where fighting took place and the general breakdown in law and order created new opportunities for breaking the law, just as the Defence of the Realm Act that was passed on the outbreak of the Great War created new laws to break. The incidence of serious crime by juvenile gangs, often abetted by adults, such as housebreaking and robbery of coal trains, became commonplace, along with fraudulent claims for separation allowances, theft of military property and greatly increased desertion rates from the British armed forces. At the same time the large scale recruitment of young adult males from working class districts into the armed forces saw a reduction in the pool of potential adult offenders and a decline in the population of Mountjoy Prison. But to return to the looters: newspapers characterised them in vivid terms that are remembered to this day. The Irish Times, which managed to publish almost uninterruptedly throughout the fighting, reported on Tuesday, 25 April, 1916, that on the previous night ‘Shop windows in North Earl Street were smashed, and the shops were looted. Noblett’s sweet shop at the corner and that of Lewers and Company [children’s outfitters] next to it in Sackville Street, were sacked, and youngsters male and female, might be seen carrying bundles of sweets, or caps, and hats, or shirts, of which the shops were despoiled. … A public house in North Earl Street was looted, and when the looters had partaken of the ardent spirits some of them beat each other with bottles so violently that they were under necessity of having their wounds dressed in hospital’.1 1 Irish Times, April 25th, 1916 1 The Irish Independent, which did not appear until 4 May, reported that ‘When darkness set in on Easter Monday the lawless element in the city set themselves out for loot. ... The revolutionaries in the GPO, did their best to stop the looting, and fired blank shots at intervals over the heads of the mob. Nothing seemed to frighten them.’2 Cumann na mBan member Min Mulcahy, in her Witness Statement to the Bureau of Military History, described the destruction while acting as a courier for the rebels. She particularly noticed the destruction of the Irish Farm and Produce Company in Henry Street owned by leading Sinn Féin activist Jennie Wyse Power: ‘I remember seeing some of the looters at Norton's in Henry St. Prams were being thrown down through the windows above, for women to catch them below. By Wednesday, Mrs Wyse- Power's place was burned and looted. She was in a bad state. I think she did not let Nancy [her daughter] go back’.3 Another witness was Nora Marion Fitzpatrick, a VAD nurse who was in Talbot Street when she saw ‘the mob attack the Dollymount tram.... I shall never forget the sight. It reminded me of the tales of the French Revolution. The back streets and slums had disgorged their inhabitants into the main thoroughfares. Looting had begun. The women, in many cases stripped absolutely naked to the waist from their struggles in the crowd, with their hair hanging loosely round their faces, were mostly drunk, and were doing far more damage than the men. They smashed the windows of the tram and tore the cushions and curtains to shreds. Then I heard some explosion... and the people scattered in all directions.’4 Initially the Military Commander of the revolutionaries, James Connolly, dismissed the looters as ‘one more problem for the British’ but he soon sent out members of the GPO garrison to disperse them by firing over their heads.5 It had little effect. Nearby Liam Archer, a Volunteer Section Commander in the Church Street area, recalled on the first evening of the Rising the ‘holidaymakers on their way home, and looters, [who] sought to pass through [the barricades]. The former we passed through in convoyed groups; the latter we stripped of all their loot and tried to frighten with dire threats’.6 Members of the Irish Citizen Army (ICA) seem to have taken a harsher view of the looters than Irish Volunteers, perhaps because their behaviour reflected so badly on the honour of a working class they sought to elevate to higher things. Yet the former secretary of the ICA Army Council Seán O’Casey, memorably described the night time scenes on O’Connell (Sackville) Street more sympathetically in his autobiography, Drums under the Window: 2 Irish Independent, April 26th to May 4th, 1916 3 BMH, WS 0399 Mrs Richard Mulcahy. 4 The Experiences of two V.A.D’s in the Sinn Fein Rebellion By “One of them”, Nora Marion Fitzpatrick 1879- 1954, Dublin City Library and Civic Archive. My thanks to Dr Máire Kennedy for bringing it to my attention 5 BMH, WS 1766, William O’Brien 6 BMH, WS 819, Liam Archer. 2 ‘The tinkle of broken glass wandered down the whole street and people were pushing and pulling each other, till through broken windows all the treasures of India, Arabia and Samarkand were open before them… They pulled boxes down on top of themselves, flung clothing all over the place; tried to pull new garments over old ones; while one woman, stripped naked, was trying on camisole after camisole, ending with calm touches that smoothed out the light blue one that satisfied her at last. All who were underdressed before, were overdressed now, and for the first time in their frosty lives the heat of good warm things encircled them.’7 Who were the looters? Who were these looters, many of whom ran the risk of being shot, struck by shrapnel, crushed by falling buildings or burnt to death? It is probable that they comprised some at least of the civilian casualties in Easter Week. We can at last identify some of them, or those at least who benefitted from the proceeds through the Dublin Metropolitan Police Prisoners Books, which have recently come to light. The most immediate fact to stand out is that possessors of loot were far more likely to be women than men, and married women or widows rather than single girls. In normal times men arrested for criminal activity outnumbered women by a factor of four or five to one in Dublin, and this did not change significantly during the war, although women were increasingly likely to be involved in ‘white collar’ crimes such as fraudulent claims for separation allowances. Nor was the gender balance of arrests affected by the general retreat by the DMP from the streets in the Great War. Summonses served by the DMP fell by over half between 1912 and 1919, arrests fell by two-thirds and assaults on DMP constables by 80 per cent.8 This was part of a survival strategy pursued by policemen as the city became increasingly lawless. It certainly increased opportunities for crime, most of which would go unreported and undetected. During the Rising, the absence of the police was particularly noticeable. A brief exception was the ‘housebreaking squad’ of the detective, or G Division in College Street. According to Eamon Broy, a recent recruit who later worked undercover for Michael Collins, this unit’s members ‘were revolted at the sight of so much stolen property being flaunted before their eyes’ from nearby shops such as Mansfield’s, the furriers, that they ‘sallied out and filled the cells at College St. police station’. They arrested 23 people for larceny and illegal possession on April 25th, the second day of the Rising, before being ordered back to barracks.9 However the constabulary returned to the streets with a vengeance after the Rising, particularly to the tenements and ‘courts’ where poverty flourished, and where those suspected of looting lived. People who lived outside these areas could generally expect to escape retribution and keep their ill-gotten gains. 7 Seán O’Casey, Drums Under the Windows, (Pan Books, London, 1973), p. 272. 8 DMP Annual Reports and Statistical Reports, 1912-1919 9 Eamon Broy BMH WS 1280. 3 We can at last sketch out the type of people who either looted in 1916, or benefitted by the proceeds from the DMP Prisoners Book for 1916-1918. It lists ‘Prisoners Charged with Offences involving dishonesty’. Lesser offences such as soliciting or being drunk are not included. As a result a woman appearing in the book might be described as a ‘Prostitute’ by occupation but would have been charged with a more serious offence such as larceny or theft. Of course describing her as a ‘Prostitute’ might also assist the arresting officer in securing a conviction. Similarly a man’s occupation might be given as ‘Thief’, ‘Deserter’ or ‘Convict out on licence’ with a similar outcome. With these caveats in mind what does the Prisoners Book tell us about those it arrested in 1916? Firstly it indicates significant differences between males and females. Women arrested tended to be significantly older than men.